Luke Fowler Index Cards and Letters
- R.D. Laing, Politics of the Family (1971)
The Modern Institute presents Luke Fowler for Glasgow International 2021. Having built a filmography that is largely focussed on marginalised or forgotten public figures, Index Cards and Letters marks a turning point in the artist’s body of work toward the personal and the interpersonal. The show comprises two recent 16mm films: Mum’s Cards (2018) and For Dan (2021). Mum’s Cards reflects on the tools of his mother’s trade, an archive of index cards which embody a lifetime’s intellectual labour as a social scientist; whilst For Dan, filmed in an eco-community in Queensland, Australia, explores an intense period of correspondence between his late father and his best friend, the radical university lecturer Dan O’Neill. The film documents impressionistically both the friendship between these two young men and a political history of Australia in the early 1960s.
Immersed in the material limits of his subjects as well as the tools he uses to make them, Fowler’s long-standing use of a 16mm wind-up Bolex camera and dis-synchronous sound is imprinted within the narratives of his films - form and content becoming intrinsically linked. His previous films have been described as ‘para-documentary’, interweaving archival footage with his own camerawork and sounds. However, in these more personal films, the striking quality of sensitivity and openness which refuses to shy away from the complexities of lived experience and familial history lingers long after viewing, encouraging one to ruminate on their own inherited legacies.

C-Type colour print
46.2 x 55.8 x 3 cm, 18 1/4 x 22 x 1 1/8 in framed

C-Type colour print
46.2 x 55.8 x 3 cm, 18 1/4 x 22 x 1 1/8 in framed

C-Type colour print
46.2 x 55.8 x 3 cm, 18 1/4 x 22 x 1 1/8 in framed

Black and white resin print
26.5 x 21.7 x 3 cm, 10 3/8 x 8 1/2 x 1 1/8 in framed

C-Type colour print
21.7 x 26.5 x 3 cm, 8 1/2 x 10 3/8 x 1 1/8 in framed

C-Type colour print
46.2 x 55.8 x 3 cm, 18 1/4 x 22 x 1 1/8 in framed

C-Type colour print
26.5 x 21.7 x 3 cm, 10 3/8 x 8 1/2 x 1 1/8 in framed

Black and white resin print
26.5 x 21.7 x 3 cm, 10 3/8 x 8 1/2 x 1 1/8 in framed

C-Type colour print
46.2 x 55.8 x 3 cm, 18 1/4 x 22 x 1 1/8 in framed

C-Type colour print
55.8 x 46.2 x 3 cm, 22 x 18 1/4 x 1 1/8 in framed

Black and white resin print
26.5 x 21.7 x 3 cm, 10 3/8 x 8 1/2 x 1 1/8 in framed
Recent selected solo exhibitions include: Passages, The Adam Art Gallery, Wellington (2019); Sightings: Luke Fowler, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2018); Neubauer Collegium for Culture & Society at The University of Chicago (2016); To The Editor of Amateur Photographer (with Mark Fell), The Modern Institute, Aird’s Lane, Glasgow (2015); The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott, The Hepworth, Wakefield (2012).
Selected performances and screenings include: Viborg Kunsthal, Viborg, Denmark (2021); Berwich Film & Media Arts Festival, UK (2020); International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020’, Amsterdam (2020); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2019); Projections, 57th New York Film Festival, New York, USA; MONO x Queensland Film Festival, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2019); City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand (2019); International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands (2019); Anthology Film Archives, New York, USA (2018).
The artist would like to thank Chris Watson, for his sound mix on For Dan, and Creative Scotland, for their travel grant in making the project possible